A Blog of
1401 vs 360 code size,
and required Operating System

The IBM 14xx had an operating system of sorts. See here:
http://www.textfiles.com/bitsavers/pdf/ibm/14xx/C24-3298-0_1401_diskIOCSope.pdf
http://tinyurl.com/6dfgwmy [mirrors above item]
I worked at a number of sites. Only one that I can remember was crazy enough
to use it. It was much simpler to handle all I/O on your own.
The only exception I remember is the 500 byte routine to read/write a 100 character
sector of disk information. I believe that was IBM developed code.
I don't rememeber how big IOCS was.
-----Original Message-----
Robert Garner wrote:
Dan,
Thanks for your follow-up to my inquiry!
(esp fact that Model 20 had not emulated a 1401.)
I understand the 1410 did have an simple OS, called 1410-PR-108.
Clearly must have been smaller than S/360's BPS? I've attached an
earlier email stream about it.
- Robert
p.s. If you're ever vacationing on California, please accept our
invite to visit the 1401 restoration team at the Computer History
Museum, any Wednesday.
On Jul 13, 2011, at 7:02 AM, Dan Espen wrote:
>
> In the context of the 16K 1401, the S/360 requires an OS to do any
> kind
> of input/output. The smallest IBM OS was BPS (barely useful),
> around 8K.
>
> The 1401 required no OS. If you read/wrote DISK, a pre-written 500
> character
> routine handled all needs. So, being very generous to the S/360 you
> start
> with 8K vs. .5K before you write your first line of code.
>
> Discounting the OS, the 1401 had all kinds of tricks you could play
> with
> word marks and chained instructions that saved large amounts of
> memory.
>
> p.s. The model 20 did not have an emulation feature.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> Robert B Garner wrote:
>
> Ron,
>
> Interesting observation on Ed's S/360 model 30 "blog":
> http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/ibm-360-30.html
>
> Another reason 16K wasn't enough for the 360/30 is that you could
> pack a lot
> more logic into the 16K of the 1401 than the 360/30 even when coding
> both
> machines in autocoder/assembly language. I made that comment to my
> boss when we
> considering a 360 and had the IBM reps show up and challenge me in
> front of him.
> I was able to explain in detail why that was true. I was around 20
> years old at
> the time.
>
> Ron ==> Idea for a student project: Code up a small program in 1401
> Autocoder,
> and then compare its size to equivalent program in S/360, x86x and
> some RISC
> (say Power or MIPS)? Would want to run all 3 on a simulator to
> verify they get
> the same answer. ;-)
>
> - Robert
>
> p.s. Anyone: Could the S/360 model 20 also emulate the 1401 (as
> did the model
> 30)?
>
> IBM Almaden Research, San Jose, CA
> Office: 408-927-1739
> Mobile: 408-679-0976
> robgarn@us.ibm.com
Begin forwarded message:
> From: Jay Jaeger
> Date: April 4, 2009 5:24:08 AM PDT
> To: Robert Garner , Fred Brooks
> , Jack Palmer
> Cc: Robert B Garner , Jack Palmer >, Ed Thelen , Alan Kay , Sam
> Sjogren , Dick & Joyce Weaver >, Bill Worthington , Robert Garner
>, "Bob C."
> Subject: Re: Origins of OS/360 in 7090's SOS/IBSYS and DOS/360 in
> 1410's PR-155 ? (was "Why no IBM OS on 1401? (was Re: Comments on
> your comments/questions in RE "Early IBM 1401 ..."
>
> In those days there was a publication called the "program catalog"
>
> http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/ibm/1410/C20-1602-8_1410_pgmCatJun68.pdf
>
> Each program had a two-character code. PR stood for "Processor" -
> something which was a package included things like Autocoder (AU by
> itself), CB (COBOL by itself), IO (IOCS), and, of course, a
> Supervisor (SV).
>
> (A quick look there will confirm that PR-134 is indeed PR-108 with
> disk system residency).
>
> Jay
>
> At 10:20 PM 3/24/2009 -0700, Robert Garner wrote:
>> Jack, Fred,
>>
>> Is it reasonable to suggest that PR-155 (1410/7010 OS) was IBM's
>> first internally written OS for its customers?
>> Did it ship with the first 1410/7010's, 1961/1962?
>>
>> Referring to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_operating_systems
>> and
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_Operating_System
>> and Fred's and Jack Palmer's email below, here's an attempt at an
>> IBM OS timeline:
>>
>> 1955: General Motors OS for 701 -- written at GM
>> 1956: GM-NAA I/O for 704 based on GM OS -- written at GM
>> 1957: BESYS for 709x -- written at Bell Labs
>> 1959: SHARE OS (SOS) for 704 and 709 -- improvement of GM-NAA I/
>> O by SHARE users group
>> 1961: IBSYS -- port of SOS to 709x
>> 1961: PR-155 on 1410 -- written by IBM (Pok)
>> 1964: DOS/360 origins were in PR-155 and SOS
>>
>> One of my sources, shows first 1410 delivered Dec, 1961,
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> - Robert
>>
>> p.s. What did the acronym PR-155 stand for ? "Program Release
>> 155" ? Clever. ;-)
>>
>>
>> On Mar 19, 2009, at 5:12 PM, Jay Jaeger wrote:
>>
>>>> The 1410/7010 Operating System supported disks. I don't believe
>>>> that it required/mandated a disk for systems residence. Can any
>>>> of you enlighten me on tht point?
>>>
>>> Correct. PR-155 was indeed perfectly happy to use (and usually
>>> did use) tape for the System Operating File (SOF). There were
>>> lots of tape-only 1410's.
>>>
>>> The SOF could also reside on 1301 and 2302 disks. The 1410/7010
>>> OS (PR-155) did support 1311 disks, but as far as I know, you
>>> could not place the SOF there, though you could put program
>>> libraries there -- you just couldn't boot from it.
>>>
>>> (OS/360, by way of TOS, could also reside on tape. I genned and
>>> played with TOS for a bit a couple of years back, which I
>>> recovered with Paul Pierce and passed on to the Hercules
>>> repository. Had to debug Hercules tape-backward support to make
>>> it go.
>>>
>>> Jay
>>>
>>> ---
>>> Jay R. Jaeger The Computer
>>> Collection
>>> cube1@charter.net
>>
>> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>> From: Fred Brooks
>>> Date: March 18, 2009 6:48:14 PM PDT
>>> To: Robert B Garner
>>> Cc: Fred Brooks , Jack Palmer >> >, robgarn@mac.com, Ed Thelen , Jay Jaeger
>> >, alan.nemo@yahoo.com, sam.sjogren@me.com, rweaver@ix.netcom.com,
BillWorthington@comcast.net
>>> Subject: Re: Origins of OS/360 in 7090's SOS/IBSYS and DOS/360 in
>>> 1410's PR-155 ? (was "Why no IBM OS on 1401? (was Re: Comments on
>>> your comments/questions in RE "Early IBM 1401 ..."
>>>
>>> The 1410/7010 Operating System and SOS were the two equal bases
>>> for both OS/360 and DOS/360.
>>>
>>> The 1410/7010 Operating System supported disks. I don't believe
>>> that it required/mandated a disk for systems residence. Can any
>>> of you enlighten me on tht point?
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mar 16, 2009, at 8:02 PM, Robert B Garner wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Jack,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your detailed and generous reply (below) to my
>>>> questions about early software development at Time-Life
>>>> building. (If I may ask, I'd also like to forward this
>>>> discussion to our 1401_software alias. Please note I've cc'd
>>>> Fred Brooks on this email.) In particular, I'd like to explore
>>>> your response to my "Why did IBM not offer an OS for the 1401?":
>>>>
>>>> > As for 1401 operating system aspirations, there were none at
>>>> Time &
>>>> > Life. The technology was unproved -- SOS for the 709 was not
>>>> > finished until after the 1401 had been announced with just 4000
>>>> > characters of memory, and IBSYS was delivered in 1961, after
>>>> > Endicott had taken over. Someone from that organization may
>>>> speak
>>>> > to the question relative to a later time frame.
>>>>
>>>> Although we know of 1401 customers who developed their own
>>>> primitive batch spoolers/OSes, etc for the 1401, there was no
>>>> planning for an OS down-released to the 1401 after 1410/7010
>>>> OSs? Because 1401 was expected to phase down; OS would have
>>>> dictated 16K configs; customers didn't need an OS or cared/asked
>>>> for one; or ? Or you were not involved at that time?
>>>>
>>>> There's an email (copied below) from two 1410 users (Jay Jaeger
>>>> and Bill Worthington) on the 1410 "PR-155" OS.
>>>> Would you agree with his assessment?:
>>>> > OS/360 has clear roots coming from the 709x series OSs, and
>>>> > DOS/360 has its roots on the 1410 side.
>>>>
>>>> If the Wikipedia entry on SOS (below) is accurate--that IBSYS was
>>>> the 7090's OS--and Jay's comment that OS/360 had roots in 709x
>>>> series OS, then the family tree for OS/360 was:
>>>> 709's SOS --> 709x's IBSYS --> OS/360 ?
>>>> The Wikipedia page on OS/360, doesn't mention its antecedents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/360
>>>> > IBM introduced a series of stop-gaps to prevent System/360
>>>> hardware
>>>> > sales from collapsing--first BOS/360 (Basic Operating System,
>>>> for the
>>>> > smallest, card-only machines), then TOS/360 (Tape Operating
>>>> System,
>>>> > for machines with only tape drives), and finally DOS/360 (Disk
>>>> Operating System)...
>>>>
>>>> And given Jay's observation:
>>>> 1410's PR-155 --> DOS/360 ,
>>>>
>>>> do you know what the origins were of the 1410 OS (PR-155) and
>>>> 7010 OS (name?)?
>>>> Or was 1410's PR-155 OS formed out of whole cloth?
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>
>>>> - Robert
>>>>
>>>> p.s. This is what Wikipedia says about SOS and IBSYS:
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SHARE_Operating_System
>>>>
>>>> The SHARE Operating System, also known as SOS, was created in
>>>> 1959 as an improvement on the General Motors GM-NAA I/O operating
>>>> system, the first operating system, by the SHARE user group. The
>>>> main target was to improve the sharing of programs over GM-NAA I/O.
>>>>
>>>> SHARE Operating System provided new methods to manage buffers and
>>>> input/output devices, and, like GM-NAA I/O, allowed execution of
>>>> programs written in assembly language.
>>>>
>>>> Initially it worked on IBM 704 computer, but later was ported to
>>>> IBM 709.
>>>>
>>>> Later IBM supported it under the name IBSYS, porting it to its
>>>> new transistor-based computers, the 7090 and 7094.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> "Jack Palmer"
>>>>
>>>> 03/14/2009 09:43 AM
>>>> To
>>>> Robert B Garner/Almaden/IBM@IBMUS
>>>> cc
>>>> "Van Snyder" , "Gary Mokotoff"
>>> >, "Bob Cenfetelli"
>>>> Subject
>>>> Comments on your comments/questions in RE "Early IBM 1401 ..."
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi Robert,
>>>>
>>>> Responding to yours of the 13th.
>>>>
>>>> Sure, it's O.K. to post and distribute the report.
>>>>
>>>> The downside for DSD of following GPD's example had more to do
>>>> with organizational isolation then physical. They all would have
>>>> gone to Poughkeepsie, but to different system management
>>>> operations. In Endicott one System Manager did all 14xx
>>>> products. I don't know how strongly the decision was based, if
>>>> at all, on projections of how many DSD programmers would have
>>>> moved "up the river." Most had strong NYC ties ("What? Move to
>>>> Endicott? My wife cried when we moved to the Bronx from
>>>> Brooklyn.")
>>>>
>>>> Of course, by the time System/360 planning and support was in
>>>> full cry, Poughkeepsie was an important programming development
>>>> center -- the OS/360 control programs and sorts were done there,
>>>> even the small (8K) assembler and a small 16K Fortran, and it was
>>>> the integrator for all the OS/360 components done there and
>>>> elsewhere -- and programming had equal standing, in the image of
>>>> the early Time & Life picture, with system management. The
>>>> 1410/7010 Operating System had been done there, or perhaps in
>>>> neighboring Kingston, and those people moved to System/360
>>>> support. Time & Life evolved into a center of competence for
>>>> Fortran and Cobol. If, how, and when it atrophied, I know not.
>>>>
>>>> While our focus is on Endicott, not San Jose, do not minimize the
>>>> importance of the latter. Larry Foster went there from Time &
>>>> Life in the fall of 1960 to be the manager. His group had to
>>>> continue the 1620 work to account for major hardware additions
>>>> (punched card I/O, disk file attachment), which work resulted in
>>>> a very successful 1620 disk operating system. They also had to
>>>> do the support for the 1710 Control System (announced in March
>>>> 1961) for industrial process control. Before Foster left for
>>>> Poughkeepsie in 1964 he had to begin support for the 1130 (1620
>>>> successor) and the 1800 Data Acquisition and Control System. In
>>>> the System/360 era, San Jose was an important center of
>>>> programming competence, responsible for assemblers.
>>>>
>>>> As for 1401 operating system aspirations, there were none at Time
>>>> & Life. The technology was unproved -- SOS for the 709 was not
>>>> finished until after the 1401 had been announced with just 4000
>>>> characters of memory, and IBSYS was delivered in 1961, after
>>>> Endicott had taken over. Someone from that organization may
>>>> speak to the question relative to a later time frame.
>>>>
>>>> Jack
>>>> ----- Forwarded by Robert B Garner/Almaden/IBM on 03/16/2009
>>>> 04:19 PM -----
>>>> Jay Jaeger
>>>>
>>>> 02/24/2009 08:24 PM
>>>> To
>>>> Bill Worthington , Robert Garner
>>> >
>>>> cc
>>>> Van Snyder , Ed Thelen >>> thelen.org>, Lyle Bickley , Robert B
>>>> Garner/Almaden/IBM@IBMUS
>>>> Subject
>>>> Re: 1410 vs 1401 (and your PDP-12 web page)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> At 05:55 PM 2/24/2009 -0800, Bill Worthington wrote:
>>>>
>>>> >I should preface this by saying that I too was a 1410 programmer
>>>> at a bank
>>>> >on the East Coast. (There's a picture of me sitting at the 1410
>>>> console
>>>> >on Ed Thelen's team website
>>>> >>>> Worthington>.)
>>>> >Yes. I did have hair on the top of my head at one time!
>>>>
>>>> Cool picture.
>>>>
>>>> >Jay, it's nice to hear someone else's fond remembrances of the
>>>> 1410.
>>>> >
>>>> >1410-PR-108 and 1410-PR-155 were tape resident operating systems
>>>> --
>>>> >although some might argue about PR-108's being quite at that
>>>> level. The
>>>> >bank elected to stay with PR-108 to the chagrin of the
>>>> programming staff
>>>> >saying that it was too complicated for the operations staff to
>>>> handle.
>>>>
>>>> PR-155 could also be disk resident (at least on some disks -- I'd
>>>> have to
>>>> check what it could reside on -- I don't think it could reside on
>>>> a 1311,
>>>> but did support them). I would say that PR-108 was not an
>>>> operating system
>>>> -- it did not have a resident monitor of any kind. Each program
>>>> generated,
>>>> or at least linked in, its own IOCS
>>>>
>>>> >As Jay says, PR-155 was similar to IBM's /16K Variant of the Basic
>>>> >Operation System for System/360 (Tape Resident)/ which quickly
>>>> became Tape
>>>> >Operating System/360 or TOS/360. PR-108 was akin to the /Basic
>>>> >Programming System/360/ (or BPS/360).
>>>>
>>>> Here I disagree. Look at the macros that DOS/360 uses -- they
>>>> are the same
>>>> (DTF and friends) that the PR-155 used. Capability wise, they
>>>> (TOS/BPS and
>>>> PR-155) may have been similar, but looking at roots and where
>>>> things came
>>>> from, OS/360 has clear roots coming from the 709x series OSs, and
>>>> DOS/360
>>>> has its roots on the 1410 side.
>>>>
>>>> Paul Pierce and I recovered some original OS/360 distribution
>>>> tapes,
>>>> including the ability to gen TOS -- I used it under Hercules
>>>> (after doing
>>>> some debugging on the read-tape-backwards support in the
>>>> process). They
>>>> read just fine. It is posted up on a couple of sites yet.
>>>>
>>>> >PR-108 had the Autocoder compiler on it and and full IOCS
>>>> support for
>>>> >tape. (I can't remember if it supported disks -- 1311, 1305,
>>>> etc.) As I
>>>> >recall, it also had RPG, COBOL and FORTRAN although we didn't
>>>> write in
>>>> >those languages -- except for one trial with FORTRAN.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, it did. And it did have limited support for disks, but
>>>> could not
>>>> reside there. If I recall correctly, PR-134 is effectively
>>>> PR-108 resident
>>>> on disk, from what I can remember. PR-155 supported those same
>>>> languages,
>>>> as well. With PR-155, the IOCS was resident -- programs shared
>>>> it. It
>>>> could also do a checkpoint-restart (The University of Wisconsin
>>>> freshman
>>>> registration program used it. I made extra money as a student
>>>> night-sitting it: at the time city ordinances prohibited having
>>>> computers
>>>> running unattended due to perceived fire hazard, I think).
>>>>
>>>> ---
>>>> Jay R.
>>>> Jaeger
>>>>
The
>>>> Computer Collection
>>>> cube1@charter.net
>
> ---
> Jay R. Jaeger The Computer
> Collection
> cube1@charter.net